The Mill on the Floss
imagination urged upon her a sense of privation too keen to let her
taste what was offered in the transient present. Her future, she
thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of
contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing;
she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she
found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and
despaired of, becoming more and more importunate. The sound of the
opening door roused her, and hastily wiping away her tears, she began
to turn over the leaves of her book.
“There is one pleasure, I know, Maggie, that your deepest dismalness
will never resist,” said Lucy, beginning to speak as soon as she
entered the room. “That is music, and I mean you to have quite a
riotous feast of it. I mean you to get up your playing again, which
used to be so much better than mine, when we were at Laceham.”
“You would have laughed to see me playing the little girls’ tunes over
and over to them, when I took them to practise,” said Maggie, “just for
the sake of fingering the dear keys again. But I don’t know whether I
could play anything more difficult now than ‘Begone, dull care!’”
“I know what a wild state of joy you used to be in when the glee-men
came round,” said Lucy, taking up her embroidery; “and we might have
all those old glees that you used to love so, if I were certain that
you don’t feel exactly as Tom does about some things.”
“I should have thought there was nothing you might be more certain of,”
said Maggie, smiling.
“I ought rather to have said, one particular thing. Because if you feel
just as he does about that, we shall want our third voice. St Ogg’s is
so miserably provided with musical gentlemen. There are really only
Stephen and Philip Wakem who have any knowledge of music, so as to be
able to sing a part.”
Lucy had looked up from her work as she uttered the last sentence, and
saw that there was a change in Maggie’s face.
“Does it hurt you to hear the name mentioned, Maggie? If it does, I
will not speak of him again. I know Tom will not see him if he can
avoid it.”
“I don’t feel at all as Tom does on that subject,” said Maggie, rising
and going to the window as if she wanted to see more of the landscape.
“I’ve always liked Philip Wakem ever since I was a little girl, and saw
him at Lorton. He was so good when Tom hurt his foot.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” said Lucy. “Then you won’t mind his coming
sometimes, and we can have much more music than we could without him.
I’m very fond of poor Philip, only I wish he were not so morbid about
his deformity. I suppose it _is_ his deformity that makes him so sad,
and sometimes bitter. It is certainly very piteous to see his poor
little crooked body and pale face among great, strong people.”
“But, Lucy——” said Maggie, trying to arrest the prattling stream.
“Ah, there is the door-bell. That must be Stephen,” Lucy went on, not
noticing Maggie’s faint effort to speak. “One of the things I most
admire in Stephen is that he makes a greater friend of Philip than any
one.”
It was too late for Maggie to speak now; the drawingroom door was
opening, and Minny was already growling in a small way at the entrance
of a tall gentleman, who went up to Lucy and took her hand with a
half-polite, half-tender glance and tone of inquiry, which seemed to
indicate that he was unconscious of any other presence.
“Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Tulliver,” said Lucy, turning
with wicked enjoyment toward Maggie, who now approached from the
farther window. “This is Mr Stephen Guest.”
For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the sight
of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the
next, Maggie felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving
the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a person
toward whom she herself was conscious of timidity.
This new experience was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it
almost effaced her previous emotion about Philip. There was a new
brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, as she
seated herself.
“I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before
yesterday,” said Lucy, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her
lover’s confusion; the advantage was usually on his side.
“This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Tulliver,” said
Stephen, seating himself by Lucy, and stooping to play with Minny, only
looking at Maggie furtively. “She said you had light hair and blue
eyes.”
“Nay, it was you who said so,” remonstrated Lucy. “I only refrained
from destroying your confidence in your own second-sight.”
“I wish I could always err in the same way,” said Stephen, “and find
reality so much more beautiful than my preconceptions.”
“Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion,” said Maggie, “and
said what it was incumbent on you to say under the circumstances.”
She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear to her that he
had been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lucy had said
he was inclined to be satirical, and Maggie had mentally supplied the
addition, “and rather conceited.”
“An alarming amount of devil there,” was Stephen’s first thought. The
second, when she had bent over her work, was, “I wish she would look at
me again.” The next was to answer,—
“I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A
man is occasionally grateful when he says ‘Thank you.’ It’s rather hard
upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world
declines a disagreeable invitation, don’t you think so, Miss Tulliver?”
“No,” said Maggie, looking at him with her direct glance; “if we use
common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because
they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners,
or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.”
“Then my compliment ought to be eloquent,” said Stephen, really not
quite knowing what he said while Maggie looked at him, “seeing that the
words were so far beneath the occasion.”
“No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of
indifference,” said Maggie, flushing a little.
Lucy was rather alarmed; she thought Stephen and Maggie were not going
to like each other. She had always feared lest Maggie should appear too
old and clever to please that critical gentleman. “Why, dear Maggie,”
she interposed, “you have always pretended that you are too fond of
being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some one
ventures to admire you.”
“Not at all,” said Maggie; “I like too well to feel that I am admired,
but compliments never make me feel that.”
“I will never pay you a compliment again, Miss Tulliver,” said Stephen.
“Thank you; that will be a proof of respect.”
Poor Maggie! She was so unused to society that she could take nothing
as a matter of course, and had never in her life spoken from the lips
merely, so that she must necessarily appear absurd to more experienced
ladies, from the excessive feeling she was apt to throw into very
trivial incidents. But she was even conscious herself of a little
absurdity in this instance. It was true she had a theoretic objection
to compliments, and had once said impatiently to Philip that she didn’t
see why women were to be told with a simper that they were beautiful,
any more than old men were to be told that they were venerable; still,
to be so irritated by a common practice in the case of a stranger like
Mr Stephen Guest, and to care about his having spoken slightingly of
her before he had seen her, was certainly unreasonable, and as soon as
she was silent she began to be ashamed of herself. It did not occur to
her that her irritation was due to the pleasanter emotion which
preceded it, just as when we are satisfied with a sense of glowing
warmth an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon us as a sudden
smart.
Stephen was too well bred not to seem unaware that the previous
conversation could have been felt embarrassing, and at once began to
talk of impersonal matters, asking Lucy if she knew when the bazaar was
at length to take place, so that there might be some hope of seeing her
rain the influence of her eyes on objects more grateful than those
worsted flowers that were growing under her fingers.
“Some day next month, I believe,” said Lucy. “But your sisters are
doing more for it than I am; they are to have the largest stall.”
“Ah yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their own
sitting-room, where I don’t intrude on them. I see you are not addicted
to the fashionable vice of fancy-work, Miss Tulliver,” said Stephen,
looking at Maggie’s plain hemming.
“No,” said Maggie, “I can do nothing more difficult or more elegant
than shirt-making.”
“And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Maggie,” said Lucy, “that I
think I shall beg a few specimens of you to show as fancy-work. Your
exquisite sewing is quite a mystery to me, you used to dislike that
sort of work so much in old days.”
“It is a mystery easily explained, dear,” said Maggie, looking up
quietly. “Plain sewing was the only thing I could get money by, so I
was obliged to try and do it well.”
Lucy, good and simple as she was, could not help blushing a little. She
did not quite like that Stephen should know that; Maggie need not have
mentioned it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,—the pride
of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Maggie had been
the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means of giving
greater piquancy to her beauty in Stephen’s eyes; I am not sure that
the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have done alone,
but assisted by the beauty, they made Maggie more unlike other women
even than she had seemed at first.
“But I can knit, Lucy,” Maggie went on, “if that will be of any use for
your bazaar.”
“Oh yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with scarlet wool
to-morrow. But your sister is the most enviable person,” continued
Lucy, turning to Stephen, “to have the talent of modelling. She is
doing a wonderful bust of Dr Kenn entirely from memory.”
“Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near together, and the
corners of the mouth very far apart, the likeness can hardly fail to be
striking in St Ogg’s.”
“Now that is very wicked of you,” said Lucy, looking rather hurt. “I
didn’t think you would speak disrespectfully of Dr Kenn.”
“I say anything disrespectful of Dr Kenn? Heaven forbid! But I am not
bound to respect a libellous bust of him. I think Kenn one of the
finest fellows in the world. I don’t care much about the tall
candlesticks he has put on the communion-table, and I shouldn’t like to
spoil my temper by getting up to early prayers every morning. But he’s
the only man I ever knew personally who seems to me to have anything of
the real apostle in him,—a man who has eight hundred a-year and is
contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he gives away
two-thirds of his income. That was a very fine thing of him,—taking
into his house that poor lad Grattan, who shot his mother by accident.
He sacrifices more time than a less busy man could spare, to save the
poor fellow from getting into a morbid state of mind about it. He takes
the lad out with him constantly, I see.”
“That is beautiful,” said Maggie, who had let her work fall, and was
listening with keen interest. “I never knew any one who did such
things.”
“And one admires that sort of action in Kenn all the more,” said
Stephen, “because his manners in general are rather cold and severe.
There’s nothing sugary and maudlin about him.”
“Oh, I think he’s a perfect character!” said Lucy, with pretty
enthusiasm.